Yesterday was the 95th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, the largest man-made explosion up to the atomic bomb. Two thousand people died, more than six thousand were wounded and blinded (by flying glass), and over 9,000 left homeless. Relief efforts were hampered by a blizzard the day after the disaster.

Compare those figures to the sinking of the Titanic five years earlier: 1,500 people dead, no record of injuries (they would have been few), no one blinded, no one left homeless.

But the luxury ship makes a better movie than the poor and working class homes in Halifax that were destroyed, the dead from the ship included rich people, and they were mainly American and British, while the explosion affected Canadians.

Perhaps that’s why there’s barely anyone alive in the developed world who does not know the story of the Titanic; while few people, even Canadians, remember the tragedy that befell Halifax Nova Scotia on December 6th, 1917.